


Victories With Wooden Swords

by etiquettedarling



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: AU, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-14
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 14:57:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1082370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/etiquettedarling/pseuds/etiquettedarling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s lying flat on his back, having tied off his leg wound as best as he can, in a gradually spreading pool of his own blood, when the cannon goes off and the trumpets sound. He’s spent so long staring at the sky, lost so much blood, that he’s hardly aware when they announce it. </p>
<p>“Ladies and gentlemen the victor of the 74th Hunger Games, Peeta Mellark!”<br/>---<br/>Katniss never volunteers to take Prim's place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Never Thought You'd Make It This Far

Peeta Mellark wins the 74th hunger games by pushing Cato off the cornucopia. It takes hours and the once hulking killer is gradually reduced to whimpering, begging mess of flesh as the mutts slowly and deliberately chew on him. He doesn’t want to listen to it, finds himself staring up at the artificial sky and tries to imagine what it would be like to leave his body completely. For a brief second he considers throwing himself down there to be killed off quickly rather than listening to another second of the boy crying and choking around the blood that oozes from where his face used to be.

He’s lying flat on his back, having tied off his leg wound as best as he can, in a gradually spreading pool of his own blood, when the cannon goes off and the trumpets sound. He’s spent so long staring at the sky, lost so much blood, that he’s hardly aware when they announce it.

“Ladies and gentlemen the victor of the 74th Hunger Games, Peeta Mellark!”

Somehow for the rest of his time in the capitol, as he’s healed, when his leg is removed, as he goes through the interviews and manages to once again win people over, his brain is in a similar state of unawareness. He barely even processes the rewatch, except to feel immense, nauseating guilt as Primrose Everdeen is speared by Marvel on the fourth day of the games.

Cesar asks again if there’s a pretty girl waiting for him back in district twelve. His mind doesn’t even bother to flash to a pair of accusing grey eyes that had haunted him in his moments between consciousness in the hospital as he answers “No”

“Oh I don’t think that’s true, the dashing young victor, they’ll be lining up for a moment of your time the minute you get off that train”

Peeta laughs it off in a way he supposes is sheepish because Cesar’s hand is on his shoulder in a friendly grip and everyone behind the camera is looking at him like he’s just the most darling thing they’ve ever laid eyes on.

...

The train ride home is pretty quiet except for Effie, who prattles on about how proud she is, how it’s been a long time coming for district 12, how this means she might get a promotion to a more illustrious district.

Peeta looks thoughtfully at the flask Haymitch is swigging from, considers the likeness of himself turning to a bottle of liquor for comfort and then limps out of the room, calling something over his shoulder about taking a nap.

He stares at the ceiling of his compartment, exhausted but unable to shut his eyes.

He hopes it doesn’t last.

...

A pair of grey eyes stare out at him demandingly as he waves to the crowd, still leaning heavily on his walking stick before his family obscures his view. They rush up to him and he feels his hair ruffled, gets jumped on by his brothers. His father looks like he might cry and his mother touches her hand to his face, to his shoulder and says something about how she can’t believe he told all of Panem that they eat stale bread. An accusation. It doesn’t sting like they normally do but he still mutters out a quiet “Sorry mom” as the camera crew approaches the family to ask a few questions.

He doesn’t have to look back again to know the grey eyes he noticed before are gone now. He’s not even sure if they were hers until he sees the swish of a dark braid trailing behind her as she strides away from the train station.

...

His family doesn’t move in with him.

He repeats the reasons to himself. It makes sense. They all have to work at the bakery which is a half hour walk away. They already have to get up for early, long hours. It’s inconvenient. He knows it is but he still feels a pull at his chest when his dad apologises and rests a warm hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it”

“We’ll come over tomorrow night and make dinner”

...

After days of listlessly limping around his new house (the doctors said he had to get used to his new leg, Peeta mostly just feels like the raw aching kept him alert to where he was, he doesn’t want to slip away like the first week after the games, he wants to be present to the life he had won) he’s happy to see his dad and his brothers, even his mother who looks around the large house with a look that could be distaste. He determines that it’s just her resting expression and walks them through to the kitchen leaning on the wall for support. He feels like he’s probably talking too much. If his family notices they don’t say anything.

  
He falls silent when his father drops three dead squirrels on the wooden table to be prepared for dinner. Each of them are shot expertly through the eye and Peeta can hear his mother sigh and snap something about a victor not having to eat such awful meat. That he’s not some seam brat and her son can afford to go to the butcher for beef or horse if he wants it. He thinks of Katniss Everdeen, and her braid retreating from the crowd, about her sister that never came home. She had been sweet and held his hand on the chariot ride during the opening ceremony and suddenly Peeta feels immensely grateful for his father trading with her.

“It’s fine mom”

“It’s not _your_ bread your father’s wasting on it”

He offers to make up the difference which his mother huffily agrees to and then remains mostly silent as they prepare the meal.

That night when he finally falls to sleep he dreams of a mutt with unforgiving grey eyes burrowing into his stomach, he feels like he deserves it.

Peeta pays for the squirrels from then on.

...

Delly Cartwright visits and its the first time someone who isn’t family walks into his too big house.

“Glad I can skip the line to see you” she offers as a joke, swinging her school bag over her shoulder and gazing around the living room with wide eyes and a slightly overwhelmed smile “Wow its...”

“Cozy right?”

They fall into fairly easy conversation, she lets him know what’s going on at school and he suppresses a deep urge to ask how Katniss is. Is pretty sure he doesn’t actually want to know. Maybe he does. The crush he harboured is now all mixed in with feelings of dread and guilt and he has no idea what even wants to hear. She leaves after a half hour, mentioning that she has to work at the grocers all afternoon (her big sister, the one who usually does this is expecting any day now) and promises to come over with more friends later in the week.

...

As months pass Peeta gradually creates something of a routine. His friends come over in groups on Friday afternoons, Delly popping in on Monday’s as well for good measure with a bag or two of grocery’s she’s picked up for him. She never brings up how tired he looks and he’s grateful for it. His Family comes around once a week and every couple of days he makes the long walk to his old home above the bakery, trying to get a decent handle on walking with his fake leg.

He paints his games. Over and over again. It helps him to think of it. To allow the memories to exist in some form outside the shadowy parts of his brain where they can fester and mutate. He doesn’t show anyone them and waits for the day when someone comes to film them and pry their stories from him with a sense of dull expectation.

He visits Haymitch, occasionally cleaning him up, wrinkling his nose around the smell and dodging the drunken flail of a blade if he wakes him up.

He makes bread in his own house, gives some to Haymitch. Passes his father money for game and on the rare occasion he does get to sleep he wakes up screaming.

It’s nothing he can’t get used to.

It’s odd not to be working at the bakery ( _“Victor’s don’t have to work and how would that look to everyone if you did Peeta, do you want to expose us to ridicule?”_ ) but sometimes Rote and Bracken get sick, or need a day off, a few days before the victory tour and his mother reluctantly lets Peeta come in to help. He feels useful, and warm surrounded by the ovens and save the pain in his leg (it’s easily manageable now) he feels like his old self again.

Of course, his old self had two legs, and only dropped things when he wanted to feed the little seam girl he was in mad 11-year-old love with.

He overbalances on his prosthetic towards the end of the day, drops a loaf of bread into the fire of the oven and his mother is on him bringing her hand up to crack across his face within a second of it happening. She yells something about how useless he is and he realises that her thumb nail caught on the skin of his cheek, catches a whiff of blood and his eyes fill with the gushing bloody face of Cato so quickly that he physically pushes her away from him, feeling like he’s going to be sick.

“How _dare_ you”

She continues to yell but it feels like it’s happening somewhere very far away as he staggers to the door. The blood is pounding in his ears so loudly the quickened beat seems to be impeding his vision and it feels like his stomach is on a constant plummet downwards. He needs to be outside, away from the heat of the ovens, to be able to catch his breath and all he can smell is blood.

If he can just get outside he’ll be fine.

The door swings open and Peeta finds himself locking his gaze with the pair of grey seam eyes that have been staring imploringly at him for weeks as he sleeps. She’s carrying a bag stuffed full of game, obviously there to trade with his father. The constant plummet his stomach has been on abruptly ends with a thud, the wind is completely knocked out of him and for a brief second everything goes very quiet in his head. He vaguely notices she seems more shocked than filled with vehement blame but it doesn’t stop him from wanting to throw up.

“I-uh” he starts, he can still smell blood, still hear his mother screaming at him. He lets the door close behind him. The nauseating guilt is back with the force of one of his mother’s slaps and he stops whatever he’s going to say, stammers out the word “Sorry” and then walks past her, feeling his breath quicken as the distance between them widens. He knows it has little to do with physical exertion.

His house is completely dark when he gets there and rather than making it up the stairs to his bathroom Peeta heads straight to the kitchen and empties the contents of his stomach into the sink.

The Victory tour is in 3 days and he doesn’t know to dread it yet. He thinks it would probably be good to get away, even if it means being on that train again, having to see President Snow, having to hear Effie Trinket declare it’s going to be a ‘big, big, big day’ 13 more times, having to talk to the districts and the families who’ve lost their children.

Yes, it would be nice to get out for a little while.

That night Peeta doesn’t sleep. He calls up Portia, explains about the cut on his cheek (“Hit it on a shelf, still not entirely used to the leg, it’s a little embarrassing”) and then sits in the room with all of his paintings. Stares at the one of Cato. Forces himself to look at it for two whole minutes until his pulse slows and then spares a lingering glance at an unfinished work that he’s been stuck on for weeks.

He doesn’t work on it but dozes on the couch surrounded by the smells of paint and canvas and the scene it depicts swims in and out of focus as he half dreams.

Prim lies in a pond, blood spreading through the water like a terrible vibrant flower, her hair floats dreamily about her and she smiles sadly at him as she slowly dies.


	2. Albatross

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He makes it all the way back to the party before he stops, stands still for a moment and watches the festivities continue to unfurl around him. Every breath he takes burns in his chest.
> 
> He realises his fly is still undone half a second before he leans over and retches onto the floor.
> 
> Well
> 
> Effie is mortified to say the least.

Peeta gets drunk just once on his victory tour. he’s at the Capitol and Effie is introducing him to people, showing him around President Snow’s manor. He can’t help but think if there was just one thing, one little bit of district 12 there with him he’d be able to handle it. It would keep him grounded. As it is he can feel himself nervously tap his false foot, a little tick that joins the soundscape of tinkling glass, music and laughter.

There are people, everywhere, with huge eyes, odd coloured hair, plastic faces stretched tight over their skulls, he feels dizzy taking them all in with a smile.

Haymitch has already vomited on someone. The smell is almost entirely gone from that particular part of the room and according to Effie he has already been carried to the train to sleep it off. She presses her lips together into a thin fuchsia line as she explains this before turning on her heel, clapping twice to get him to follow her, and walking from the room.

He can remember the bright red colour that had stained the fingers of the girl from District 5, smiles in a sort of vague way at someone who he might have spoken to earlier and grabs a drink from a passing tray.

…

He has an easier time not placing the specific colours that remind him of his Games after two more drinks. He laughs breezily at the conversations everyone is having around him. Grabbing another from a passing tray, the room spins a little. It feels like he’s sitting on that tire swing that used to hang in that one big tree out behind the school.

It had been cut down when he was still young enough to miss it and he remembers swinging higher and higher as he stared up through the branches at the sky, getting high enough to look at the stretch of grass that lead to the school upside down as he leant back and high enough to feel that swoop in his stomach as he came back down to earth.

He had liked that swing.

…

“Oh isn’t he adorable”

“Adorable”

“Oh we just want to eat you up”

“Uh thanks” he laughs a little, the entire thing is so bizarre that he find he has to. At any rate They’re all looking at him like he’s the most wonderful person on the planet, one woman even has her hands clutched to her chest in rapture, so it seems to be working “I’d probably go for the pastries honestly”

They erupt into laughter and he sips the frothy liquid in his glass.

...

A few more drinks later and the swimming in his head has gotten worse, but he feels relaxed, tells himself he’s not going to make a habit of it as he’s ushered into a separate room to be introduced to someone new.

“Now this is Drusilla Sloane” Effie gestures to the woman happily “she’ll be organising your social calendar whenever you should choose to return to the Capitol”

Peeta would say something about how he has no plans to return to the city outside of the games where it was required of him, he’s had enough to drink for the words to roll around on his tongue and almost spit them out. He’s too busy however, because he’s thinking that ‘social calendars’ sound an awful lot like Effie’s job and because he’s rendered speechless by the woman in front of him.

Somehow, beneath the layers of makeup, gold tipped talons for fingernails, glittering gemstones embedded all over her skin and a curly golden wig she manages to look like a dour school principal. Her skin beneath the embellishments is a greyish colour and she seems stern, and unimpressed with him already. He feels like he’s about to receive a lecture for talking too much in class.

The door swings shut with Effie outside of it “Please Peeta, take a seat”

He does so, suddenly very aware of how tucked away this room is, of how much he’s had to drink. He’s not slurring or anything, and he’s still pretty steady for someone who has a new prosthetic but this woman makes him feel self conscious.

“First of all I think we need to have a talk about your responsibilities as a victor”

He nods, swallowing a little, his mouth feels dry and despite his earlier thought, that he’s not going to make a habit out of drinking, he finds himself wishing he had a glass of that sparkling sweet wine in his hands.

Drusilla talks at length about his role as an ambassador for his district, how it is important that he understands his duties, that plenty of people who had sponsored him, who are important to the Capitol will expect him to thank them. He feels like theres something in her speech that he’s missing, wishes she would stop talking so formally and just tell him what it is he’s meant to be doing, but it never comes.

He finds himself distracted by how much she sparkles.

She wraps up her speech, tells him she’s going to introduce him to a man who was heavily involved in financing his success and then stands, indicating that he should do the same, and leads him to another room.

It’s filled with roses and is far enough away from the party that he can’t hear the music anymore. The smell is overpowering and once again, the room spins around him.

Drusilla lets him know they’ll be in touch and leaves.

...

The man’s name is Atticus and that’s all Peeta learns about him before he crosses the room, lays a hot wet kiss on his mouth and shoves his hands down his pants, pressing him against a wall.

He reacts like a caged animal, partially because what the fuck, but mostly because the last time there was a heavy weight resting on top of him it was Cato in that last scramble before he was pushed to the mutts. A gift to slowly be gorged on.

The smell of roses mingles in his mind with the smell of blood, and there’s a stranger undoing his fly and he’s drunk and he’s panicking.

Peeta doesn’t even realise he’s struggled against it until Atticus cops an elbow to the face. He realises he’s panting for a split second and then he's sprinting, as fast as his leg will allow him to, away from the room. Away from the smell of roses and blood. Away from hands and his mouth and the feel of hot breath on his neck.

He makes it all the way back to the party before he stops, stands still for a moment and watches the festivities continue to unfurl around him. Every breath he takes burns in his chest.

He realises his fly is still undone half a second before he leans over and retches onto the floor.

Well

Effie is _mortified_ to say the least.

…

On the train home he sits through the longest lecture he’s ever experienced accompanied by his first hangover and a new found desire to bathe himself in boiling water.

Haymitch, who looks as awful as Peeta feels shares a moment of eye contact over his flask. It only lasts a fraction of a second before the older man is glancing down, something like guilt on his face, and Peeta realises that he knew, he knew and he didn’t think to warn him.

He apologises for his behavior and excuses himself from the lecture to throw up again.

…

One morning, after he’s almost settled back home, Rote comes up to Victor’s Village at dawn and pounds on his front door rousing him from an uneasy sleep. Bleary eyed, in his pajamas, his leg not fastened on properly in his rush to get down the stairs, Peeta listens to his big brother’s voice thicken with tears and feels something in his chest collapse.

His father is dead 2 weeks after he returns from the capital.

Shot by a peace keeper, he was out after curfew. The details are all pretty irrelevant to Peeta.

His dad is dead.

They somehow make their way to the kitchen as Rote goes through the facts, and the only word that is pounding in his head is ‘no’.

‘No’ and ‘this is my fault’.

He knows intrinsically. Had it not been a shooting it would have been a fire, or a gas leak or food poisoning. He doesn’t doubt the capitol has a million ways it could kill you and make it look like an accident. This one is just so obvious. They want him to know. They want it to be a painful warning.

Do not disobey us, is what it says, Do not disobey us or we’ll kill them.

He wonders if Haymitch could have warned him about this as well.

…

Peeta doesn’t leave his house again until the funeral. He offers it for the wake, feels sick as the words come out and then spends 6 days sitting in his painting studio, staring at the faces of the people who have died because of him.

He thinks momentarily about painting a portrait of his father, for the funeral, but no sooner does the thought cross his mind that an unbearable weight sits on his chest and the air around him cracks. A solitary sob rips through the room. The sound strangles him and he finds himself curled up on the couch, surrounded by the familiar smell of paint a few hours later.

His leg hurts.

Delly leaves groceries on his front porch when he doesn’t answer the door and he considers just leaving them there. He can’t imagine himself feeling like food for a good long while.

But a voice in his head says something about waste and he sees 11-year-old Katniss sitting in the rain behind his house, her eyes too big in her hollow face and the addition of that guilt on top of the burning spot in his chest is too much for him. He limps out of his house and grabs the bags just as the tall iron gate of Victors Village swings shut behind a head of blonde curls.

He sits in his kitchen with the groceries at eye height on the wooden table that takes up most of the room. Tries not to think about his dead father, tries not to think about what’s going to happen when he has to go back to the capitol.

He wishes it was one or the other, guilt or dread, but it’s both and it makes him feel sick again. He wonders if he should just crack one of the bottles of cooking wine he has sitting in the pantry. Finishing it in one sitting would give him an excuse to throw up, and he thinks that might make him feel better. Thinks that the bile and acidity would scrub away at the awful feeling that refuses to shift from his rib cage. Isn’t that what you’re meant to do when you feel sick? When you ingest something that’s bad for you?

For a moment he pictures it, himself after years of drinking to remove it, vomiting on Reaping Day, hangovers and lectures and it not changing the fact he’s got to let people he doesn’t know do what they want to him or they’ll kill his family, not changing that he’ll probably come home with two dead tributes anway.

He doesn’t drink the wine that night, but he entertains the idea far too often afterwards.

...

Funeral wear, even among the comfortable enough merchant class of District 12 is not a particularly grand affair. If you don’t own black you borrow something from a friend. In the same way as is with most clothing, everyone is in lovingly worn, second hand or mended clothes. This time they just happen to be in a dusty shade of charcoal grey.

Peeta, dressed in a stiff jet black suit made specially for the harvest festival, and worn only once on that specific occasion sticks out like a sore thumb.

He looks down at his hands, now free from the accumulated burn marks that branded him as the son of a baker. They took his scars and made him a victor instead.

Hot tears have been streaming down his face for the entirety of the funeral and once more, he thinks about the possible future in drinking heavily to get rid of the burning sensation in his chest, the one that’s spreading to his throat as his father’s coffin is lowered into the ground. Delly has been shooting him damp, sympathetic looks throughout the short service and he can feel her eyes on him again as the coffin thuds to the ground.

Beside him, his mother draws in a shaking breath. Her arms are crossed over her chest, the tip of her nose is pink but she isn’t crying, her lips are pressed into a thin white line and her eyes are fixate on the gravesite.

A fiddler strikes up a slow tune.

Peeta numbly follows after Bracken in the procession, but doesn’t look down at the coffin as he sprinkles earth onto it, instead he focuses on how cold it feels as it slips through his fingers.

…

The idea to have dozens of people milling about his house mourning the father who was killed because of his own mistake proves to be an even worse idea than he had initially thought. He’s gotten used to being alone in there.

Alone.

Quiet.

Everyone wants to offer him their condolences, and he understands that they’re just doing what is right, that a lot of them are genuinely sad for his father’s death but he wishes they would stop.

Delly lets him know she’s sorry and that he can talk to her if he feels up to it and it’s the last straw.

“I think I’m just going to duck out for a second” He speaks in an easy way that is costing him a lot of effort, her brow furrows in sympathetic concern “could you let my family know? I’m not going to be gone for long”

The words “Okay sure” follow him out of the house.

He notices vaguely that it’s snowing.

…

The cemetery isn’t officially divided into separate sections, but its fairly easy to see how it’s happened over time. Peeta doesn’t look at the merchant headstones, he knows his father’s is there, looming in comparison to the little black plaques that he’s walking past now, for the victims of the mines. Part of him wants to lean forward and wipe the snow thats collecting on them off so he can read all of the names, but the people who mourned them know. Probably have the exact position of the little plaque that commemorates their loved one memorised, thats more important than the once son of a baker being able to read them now.

The families that are poorer, from the seam, often can’t afford headstones, not the proper ones made out of the granite from district 2, but a small shanty town of wooden pikes nailed together and wreathed with long dead flowers marks where they lay. Behind them, an iron fence rises in the gradually thickening snow and Peeta stops, realises where he’s been heading.

It’s incorrect to say the cemetery in District 12 isn’t officially segregated, because there is one instance where that is the case.

Tributes in little straight lines buried one after the other, year after year in the same sprawling plot of land.

It always amazes him how much space there is still left but as it occurs to him this time all he can hear is the sound of his father’s coffin thudding into the ground over and over and over again. He can feel it in his chest, on that spot that’s still burning. He looks at the odds, never in District 12’s favour, wonders how he even came back. It doesn’t make any sense to him, looking at all of the other tributes who never got to do the same.

…

On Prim’s grave there is a dried wreath of yellow flowers slowly getting blanketed by snow, it’s obvious who’s put them there.

He rests a hand on the headstone for a split second before removing it, glancing at the still light sky and taking off in the opposite direction of Victor’s Village.

…

By the time he finds the Everdeen’s house his foot is numb and he’s almost slipped on the greying sludge that covers the area 3 times. Being tired, cold, and with some kind of purpose has invigorated him. He still feels awful but he knows he can do something right. One thing right. So he keeps walking, straight up to the house with the goat tethered to the fence in the backyard and raps on the door.

He’s still panting, and probably flushed bright red in the cold as the door swings open.

“Peeta”

Katniss’s mother answers the door, her expression moves from shock to a sad little smile and he recalls that conversation on the first day of kindergarten. She had almost married his dad.

“I uh, hello is Katniss in?”

Peeta forgets that to hunt, you have to have a quiet tread, so when Katniss emerges from behind her mother looking equal parts confused and wary for a second he’s surprised. Her mother walks away from in front of her, and he sees her make her way to the kitchen counter behind her daughter, see’s her pick up a rag and wipe down an already spotless table before he tears his eyes away from the woman whose daughter died so he could come home.

“What do you want?” She seems somehow like she’s about scurry away at a sudden movement but firmly rooted in place at the same time.

“To talk to you” he stops, swallows and carries on the sentence like he hadn’t just lost his voice, it occurs to him that this is the most he’s ever spoken to her and the tiny part of his brain that is still capable of thinking about crushes as everything else shatters around him seems to kick in and remind him in that moment “about trading”

“What about it?”

“I know that my dad traded with you” he’s hyper aware of his funeral clothing for a moment, the fact he’s covered in snow. He probably still has red puffy eyes from all the crying  and he doesn’t doubt he looks pretty pathetic right at that second but he really doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to impress Katniss, he wants to help her “and now that-” he exhales sharply ”I’d like to see if I could organise something, he always brought a squirrel or two up to the house for me” He doesn’t have to say anything about his mother not being willing to do the same so he just stops talking and looks to her for response.

“He traded bread”

Peeta feels his eyebrows rise slightly, a little taken aback that this is her protest “I can make bread, or pay you” her face remains unreadable “whatever is easiest I don’t mind”

Though it couldn’t be longer than a second, the pause she takes seems to stretch out indefinitely. The end of her braid has swung over her shoulder and rests on her collarbone and he finds himself fixated on it for longer than he intends before he forces himself to stop staring at it, and makes himself gaze over her shoulder again, where her mother is still wiping down the counter.

The feeling of nauseating guilt is back, creeping up his throat and he curls his completely numb toes up in his shoe trying not to focus on it.  

“I hunt on Sundays”

…

He can’t feel his hands by the time he’s back at the cemetery and he stops, glances to fenced off area and heads back around to where his own father’s tombstone sits and decides which he’s going to walk past.

He has no plans to stop in front of it and has spent too much time that day standing around staring at his father’s name engraved in stone to get that close to where it sits. Snow is falling thick and it rests on his numb cheeks, settles on the neck of his collar. He wishes he had thought to bring a coat. The wish dies half formed as he glances over his shoulder and realises there’s something resting on his father’s headstone. Something he doesn’t remember seeing there as he left the service.

He is eleven limping steps away from the headstone but it only takes eight for him to realise what’s sitting there.

The smell hits him first.

Roses.


End file.
